Darkness and Daylight - Mary J. Holmes (great novels of all time .txt) 📗

to stop it, for New Year’s is the time. Will you, Arthur?”

There was an instant of silence in the room—Nina waiting for Arthur to speak, and Arthur mustering all his strength to answer her as he felt he must.

“My darling,” laying his face down upon her neck among her yellow curls, “I shall never call another by the dear name I call you now, my wife.”

“Oh, Arthur,” and Nina’s cheeks flushed with indignant surprise, that he, too, should prove refractory. Everything indeed, was getting upside down. “Why not?” she asked. “Don’t you love Miggie?”

“Yes, very, very dearly! but it is too much to hope that she will ever be mine. I do not deserve it. You ask me my forgiveness, Nina. Alas! alas! I have tenfold more need of yours. It did not matter that we both wearied of our marriage vows, made when we were children—did not matter that you are crazy—I had no right to love another.

“But you have paid for it all a thousand times!” interrupted Nina. “You are a better Arthur than you were before, and Nina never could see the wrong in your preferring beautiful, sensible Miggie, to crazy, scratching, biting, teasing Nina, even if Richard had said over a few words, of which neither of us understood the meaning, or what it involved, this taking for better or worse. It surely cannot be wrong to marry Miggie when I’m gone, and you will, Arthur, you will!”

“No, Nina, no! I should be adding sin to sin did I seek to change her decision, and so wrong the noble Richard. His is the first, best claim. I will not interfere. Miggie must keep her word uninfluenced by me. I shall no raise my voice against it.”

“Oh, Arthur, Arthur!” Nina cried, clasping her hands together; “Miggie does not love him, and you surely know the misery of a marriage without love. It must not be! It shall no be! you can save Miggie, and you must!”

Every word was fainter than the preceding, and, when the last was uttered, Nina’s head dropped from Arthur’s shoulder to the pillow, and he saw a pinkish stream issuing from her lips. A small blood vessel had been ruptured, and Arthur, who knew the danger, laid his hand upon her mouth as he saw her about to speak, bidding her be quiet if she would not die at once.

Death, however long and even anxiously expected is unwelcome at the last, and Nina shrank from its near approach, laying very still, while Arthur summoned aid. Only once she spoke, and then she whispered, “Miggie,” thus intimating that she would have her called. In much alarm Edith came, trembling when she saw the fearful change which had passed over Nina, whose blue eyes followed her movements intently, turning often from her to Arthur as If they fain would utter what was in her mind. But not then was Nina St. Claire to die. Many days and nights were yet appointed her, and Arthur and Edith watched her with the tenderest care; only these two, for so Nina would have it. Holding their hands in hers she would gaze from one to the other with a wistful, pleading look, which, far better than words, told what she would say, were It permitted her to speak, but in the deep brown eyes of Arthur, she read always the same answer, while Edith’s would often fill with tears as she glanced timidly at the apparently cold, silent man, who, she verily believed, had ceased to love her.

But Nina knew better. Clouded as was her reason, she penetrated the mask he wore, and saw where the turbulent waters surged around him, while with an iron will and a brave heart he contended with the angry waves, and so outrode the storm. And as she watched them day after day, the purpose grew strong within her that if it were possible the marriage of Edith and Richard should be prevented, and as soon as she was able to talk she broached the subject to them both.

“Stay, Miggie,” she said to Edith, who was stealing from the room. “Hear me this once. You are together now, you and Arthur.”

“Nina,” said the latter, pitying Edith’s agitation, “You will spare us both much pain if you never allude again to what under other circumstances might have been.”

“But I must,” cried Nina. “Oh, Arthur, why won’t you go to Richard and tell him all about it?”

“Because it would be wrong,” was Arthur’s answer, and then Nina turned to Edith, “Why won’t you, Miggie?”

“Because I have solemnly promised that I would not,” was her reply.

And Nina rejoined, “Then I shall write. He loved little Snow Drop. He’ll heed what she says when she speaks from the grave. I’ll send him a letter.”

“Who’ll take it or read it to him if you do?” Arthur asked, and the troubled eyes of blue turned anxiously to Edith.

“Miggie, sister, won’t you?”

Edith shook her head, not very decidedly, it is true, still it was a negative shake, and Nina said, “Arthur boy, will you?”

“No, Nina, no.”

Hia answer was determined, and poor, discouraged Nina sobbed aloud, “Who will, who will?”

In the adjoining room there was a rustling sound—a coming footstep, and Victor Dupres appeared in the door. He had been an unwilling hearer of that conversation, and when Nina cried “who will?” he started up, and coming into the room as if by accident, advanced to the bedside and asked in his accustomed friendly way, “How is Nina to-night?” Then bending over her so that no one should hear, he whispered softly, “Don’t tell them, but I’ll read that letter to Richard!”

Nina understood him and held his hand a moment while she looked the thanks she dared not speak.

“Nina must not talk any more” Arthur said, as Victor walked away, “she is wearing out too fast,” and with motherly tenderness he smoothed her tumbled pillow—pushed back behind her ears the tangled curls—kissed her forehead, and then went out into the deepening night, whose cool damp air was soothing to his burning brow, and whose sheltering mantle would tell no tales of his white face or of the cry which came heaving up from where the turbulent waters lay, “if it be possible let this temptation pass from me, or give me strength to resist it.”

His prayer was heard—the turmoil ceased at last—the waters all were stilled, and Arthur went back to Nina, a calm, quiet man, ready and willing to meet whatever the future might bring.

 

CHAPTER XXXI.

LAST DAYS.

 

“Aunt Hannah will stay with me to-night,” Nina said to Arthur the next day, referring to an old negress who had taken cure of her when a child; and Arthur yielded to her request the more willingly, because of his own weariness.

Accordingly old Hannah was installed watcher in the sick room, receiving orders that her patient should not on any account be permitted to talk more than was absolutely necessary. Nina heard this injunction of Arthur and a smile of cunning flitted across her face as she thought how she would turn it to her own advantage in case Hannah refused to comply with her request, which she made as soon as they were left alone.

Hannah must first prop her up in bed, she said, and then give her her portfolio, paper, pen and ink. As she expected, the negress objected at once, bidding her be still, but Nina declared her intention of talking as fast and as loudly as she could, until her wish was gratified. Then Hannah threatened calling Arthur, thereupon the willful little lady rejoined, “I’ll scream like murder, if you do, and burst every single blood-vessel I’ve got, so bring me the paper, please, or shall I got it myself,” and she made a motion as if the would leap upon the floor, while poor old Hannah, regretting the task she had undertaken, was compelled to submit and bring the writing materials as desired.

“Now you go to sleep,” Nina said coaxingly, and as old Hannah found but little difficulty in obeying the command, Nina was left to herself while she wrote that long, long message, a portion of which we give below.

“DEAR MR. RICHARD:

“Poor blind man! Nina is so sorry for you to-night, because she knows that what she has to tell you will crush the strong life all out of your big heart, and leave it as cold and dead as she will be when Victor reads this to you. There won’t be any Nina then, for Miggie and Arthur, and a heap more, will have gone with their way out where both my mothers are lying, and Miggie’ll cry, I reckon when she hears the gravel stones ruttling down just over my head, but I shall know they cannot hit me, for the coffin-lid will be between, and Nina’ll lie so still. No more pain; no more buzzing; no more headache; no more darkness; won’t it be grand, the rest I’m going to. I shan’t be crazy in Heaven. Arthur says so; and he knows.

“Poor Arthur! It is of him and Miggie I am writing to you, if I ever can get to them; and Richard; when you hear this read, Nina’ll be there with you; but you can’t see her, because you’re blind, and you couldn’t see if you wern’t, but she’ll be there just the same. She’ll sit upon your knee, and wind her arms around your neck, so as to comfort you when the great cry comes in, the crash like the breaking up of the winter ice on the northern ponds, and when you feel yourself all crushed like they are in the spring, listen and you’ll hear her whispering, ‘Poor Richard, Nina pities you so much! She’ll kiss your tears away, too, though maybe you won’t feel her. And, Richard, you’ll do right, won’t you. You’ll give Miggie up. You’ll let Arthur have her, and so bring back the sunshine to her face. She’s so pale now and sorry, and the darkness lies thickly around her.

“There are three kinds of darkness, Richard. One like mine, when the brain has a buzz in the middle, and everything is topsy-turvy. One, like yours, when the world is all shut out with its beauty and its flowers; and then there’s another, a blacker darkness when the buzz is in the heart, making it wild with pain. Such, Richard is the darkness, which lies like a pall around our beautiful sister Miggie, and it will deepen and deepen unless you do what Nina asks you to do, and what Miggie never will, because she promised that she wouldn’t–—”

Then followed the entire story of the marriage performed by Richard, of the grief which followed, of Arthur’s gradually growing love of Edith, of the scene of the Deering Woods, of the incidents connected with Edith’s sickness, her anguish at parting with Arthur, her love for him still, her struggles to do right, and her determination to keep her engagement even though she died in doing it.

All this was told in Nina’s own peculiar style; and then came her closing appeal that Richard himself should break the bonds and set poor Miggie free.

“… It will be dreadful at first, I know, and may be all three of the darknesses will close around you for a time,—darkness of the heart, darkness of the brain, and darkness of the eyes, but it will clear away and the daylight will break, in which you will be happier than in calling Miggie your wife, and knowing how she shrinks from you, suffering your caresses only because she knows she must, but feeling so sick at her stomach all the time, and wishing you wouldn’t touch her. I know just how it feels, for